Williams, Hal

ORAL HISTORY OF HAL WILLIAMS
Interviewed by Chris Albrecht
Filmed by Significant Productions
November 3, 2005
Transcribed by Jordan Reed
MR. WILLIAMS: I moved in that house there, the 19th day of February, 1949. I have been there ever since. I rented a house for years from the government and then I bought it. I own it. Been the owner there since ’73.
MR. ALBRECHT: So, you bought the house in ’73?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: What year did you come to Oak Ridge?
MR. WILLIAMS: I started working here the 8th day of July, 1943.
MR. ALBRECHT: How did you hear about, how did you learn about coming to Oak… I think I heard something about you already worked for J.A. Jones. Tell us about that.
MR. WILLIAMS: See, I already worked for J.A. Jones two years before I came here. We wind up, I don’t know where you ever been to, Mississippi. Well, working here two jobs, one at Flora, Mississippi, and one at Grenada, Mississippi. He built the Army camp there. He built the Army camp. They still use that for [inaudible] I think. I worked there two years with him. Then last day of June in 1943, they told us that we, they didn’t need us no more, the jobs. They said we got two places for you to go. You go to Knoxville, Tennessee, or Tacoma, Washington. My home, I was born and raised 15 miles out of Memphis. I said I’m not going to Tacoma, Washington. I’ll go to Knoxville, Tennessee.
[break in audio]
MR. ALBRECHT: Where were we?
MR. WILLIAMS: Believe you was asking me…
MR. ALBRECHT: You had a choice of Knoxville or Tacoma. And you decided to come here. Let’s pick up there.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah. I decided I would come here, where I’d be closer to home. I told them I didn’t know nothing about no Tacoma, Washington. And what happened there was nine of us working on this job. We got, they laid us off the last day of June and we were suppose to come the next day. We had two days or three. One of the fellows, there was some kind of factory there in Memphis, his brother worked there and he worked on this thing. He decided he wanted to go by and see his brother. And some kind of machine that had a saw and you pulled it. He worked there for a long time, before he started working with us. So he went there before he come up here. He was going to go by and see his brother. He asked the brother if he could use that thing. He’d been working there for years, and so, I don’t know, he just reached and got that thing. It’s got a saw blade on it and he stumbled, or something, and that thing cut him right in two. So, after that we was suppose to come here that next day, but after that happened to that guy, we decided we’d stay on until they had the funeral. The other nine, there were ten of us was coming, and so after they had the funeral, we still messed around. The police knew all us was coming down home. And so the company get the police the names and told them to when we were going to come be down there that Monday to Knoxville, Tennessee. We came down and got down there at 9 o’clock that Monday morning. We went into the post office to get us a ticket. We got on the office about 10 o’clock that day and rolled into Jackson, Tennessee, and then we had to change. We was on a Trailway bus, had to change to Greyhound in Jackson, Tennessee. We went down and stayed down in Jackson, Tennessee, until about 12, 1 o’clock that night. We had a, they had a chartered bus for us. I thought all the time I was going, I was going all I know was Knoxville. Well, when we got into over here in Kingston. You know where Kingston is? The driver said, “This is where y’all get off at.” I said, “No, this ain’t where we get off. We get in Knoxville.” He said, “No, you don’t go no further, you get off here.” So, we got off and walked under the streetlight and seen something colored, looked up there in that high mountain setting up there. “What in the world they mean to put us in this place?” to the bus driver. Well, there was this lady and she was use to folks coming there and she had some kind of little hotel and restaurant or something. She come out there, said, “How y’all doing?” We told here. She said, “Well, I fixed y’all some breakfast.” She said, “They aren’t going to open over there where y’all going until about 9 or 10 o’clock.” And so we sat down and eat there on the walk and I reckon about an hour or two after that we were still sitting there. I didn’t know at that time. Had no, had never been down there in that part of town. We left at four, they come and got us. I reckon a hundred people lined up on the other side of the street looking at us wondering what we were doing there. They just walked up and down the street. That group would leave off and then another group come up. But we were on one side of the street and they were on the other side. I heard after then, after working here long that they never seen no color people down there where we were at. So, that’s why they were congregating. They didn’t bother, didn’t say nothing, but they just amazed to see us down there. We were on our way out here to this place coming in here, K-25. But after living round here and coming here and going back and forth, they were looking was because there were never no colored people down in Kingston where we were at. So, we came on in. We had to go, they didn’t have nothing for you to live in. Not here. They didn’t put nothing. I don’t know if you from around here or you not heard of Norris? You know where Norris is at? Well, there was a CCC camp and they had that closed. We stayed there until they built a hut thing. We live there at work down there, K-25 and Jones.
MR. ALBRECHT: How long did you live there in Norris and have to come back and forth?
MR. WILLIAMS: I stayed there about two weeks. I stayed there about two. The boys would come. A fellow came a week and stayed and that’s where they were at. Finally, they had the, what they call huts. They was on tractor trailers sitting down there, but there wasn’t anybody to unload them or do the work. There wasn’t anybody to do them. They started, come in. I was a concrete finisher, poured the bathhouse and things. The first four huts we build and got them up, we moved in them. Then they kept adding them, building them bathhouses, finally built a cafeteria. But we stayed in the first four huts.
MR. ALBRECHT: Tell me about the huts, I know, how were they to live in? Like in the winter, were they cold, in the summer, were they hot? How much room did you have? Tell me about that.
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, there were four beds in these round type huts. Four men or whatever it was. You didn’t have but four. You had a cot right over in that corner and another in that corner. Two on that side and two on that side. A great big ole coal heater sat right up the center, that’s what you warmed by. That big ole coal heater. They had some coal; you go out there and bang it down. It would burn you up though when it was hot in there. When the fire went down you put some coal or wood in that little box. [Inaudible] That’s what it was. I stayed in that hut I reckon about, bet about three years in that thing. Finally, they moved us out of there. Well we moved into some dormitory things. Men and women. When we came and living in the huts, the whites were living there. But when they got laid off, then they put us in them. Then we got put there. The next thing, we moved over here, to the same type of thing like the huts, over here. Right in there through, I don’t know if you know where that place at, at that time, it was called the hut area. Where the Red Cross, is a cemetery right in there now they got houses in there. That’s where we moved from down there to there. Red Cross in front of the Holiday Inn all the way up to where you see them houses. That was the hut area for black and had a pen there for woman. I stayed there until they built them houses. I worked on them. Finished the walks and things. The house I’m in right now. The government built them with two parts. I moved in one end and they rented the other end out. That’s the way you finally got a house and out of them huts. Couldn’t nobody...
We were, at first, was going to build an all stone house. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Woodland neighborhood over there, but just block houses over there. It was 500 of them block houses they were going to put in down there. After they find out that it was too expensive for the blacks to live in. They couldn’t, with the jobs they had, couldn’t pay the rent. We went back. Right up yonder there at Jackson Square, the Town Hall right up there, what they use to called Town Hall was up there at Jackson Square, use to be a fire hall in part now. Went up there and met with the governor, DOE and asked them could they build us something cheaper. They said yeah. We just take those 400 and some block houses and put them in Woodland area and we built a house down there with two units and that would be cheaper. That’s what they did. I worked with the contractor, finished the concrete sidewalks and things. The government, you went down and picked out your house where you want to live when they got it down, while they were working on it. They called me the 19th day of February, 1949; I come in from working at K-25 and I come in, me and my wife, and they had a moat (?) and my house was ready. I lived straight over there from that museum over there. That was called flattop. That’s where I was living at that time.
RICK: Hey Chris, I need to close that door and [inaudible].
[Break in tape]
MR. ALBRECHT: They told us there would be two people here all day.
RICK: And we’re back on.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay.
RICK: Sorry for that.
MR. ALBRECHT: I wanted to ask you when you first came here and you were living up in Norris and then in a hut, were you married at that time?
MR. WILLIAMS: No, no.
MR. ALBRECHT: You weren’t married at that time.
MR. WILLIAMS: No, I didn’t marry until 1946. I met my wife. We had to get on a bus and ride to Chattanooga, Roth [Rome], Georgia. Most everybody that got married, that’s where they went. To Roth, you heard of Roth, Georgia? I mean you might have been there. It’s right out of Chattanooga. And you could go down there and marry. You walk in there and they take your blood pressure and marry you then. Down here you had to go through a lot of stuff and that’s where I got married.
MR. ALBRECHT: You mentioned women living in the pen and the men out in the huts. How did they keep the men and women apart back then?
MR. WILLIAMS: They tried but they didn’t keep them apart. What it was was the men slip in with the bow drawn to the thing. And so the women would ease out and they take the bow down and come out them holes, than the gate because the guard was at the gate. They slip out the other way. Sometimes the guards would come around at a certain time of night there, come around checking the woman huts, you know. They go in there and they walk in there sometime and there wouldn’t be but one woman. Or sometime there wouldn’t be none. They had a mean lieutenant. He was rough at that time. He told the ladies said, you have a penny to come tell me why. He go up and down there. The women was off at the men’s hut. When he got done going up and through there, they was back in there. He was so rough and he got where he was so rough on the people that, and the [inaudible] come a leaving in the woman thing and men too because that guy was rough. They had to get rid of him because they weren’t going to work. And the government needed him. One morning, he come out, when the women went to work on Saturday. Women and men. There were about 60 something, and they had a headquarters up there, about 60 women over there and about 65, 70 men. And the superintendent came out there, won’t nobody come to work that morning. He found out they had them all up at the headquarters. Had them up there at the court. All were fastened up. Ain’t nobody on the job the superintendent called up there, wanting to know where the people was, and he found out them guards, the lieutenant had them all fastened up, up there. And that wasn’t going to work. They needed them people on the job because they needed to get that thing ready, get that bomb ready. And they run that guy, they ran him away from there. Then they had no trouble. Women went on to work and went to the huts. He was just that tough. But they got rid of him because they weren’t getting any work done. Everybody up there in the pen, locked up. That’s what happened to him. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: What, there were a lot of women working here. Were there women from outside? Were there prostitutes that would come in here?
MR. WILLIAMS: No, I mean, yes, some would come in. See that was the problem. You had to have a badge. And you had to have that badge on everywhere you went. They would have a shake down every once and a while. See women would get in here and hire in, go to work and they would get into the men’s huts. And the man be out there looking for them. They don’t stop work; see some of them didn’t come to work anymore. All they wanted was to get in the gate and get a pass to get in here. And then they do that hut thing. Then the guards come in catching them. They would camp out yonder by Elza Gate. You know where that is, going out the [Oak Ridge] Turnpike? They camp out there and put them out the gate. And then some of them get back in there. Tons of women came back. They didn’t know how they were getting back in. Right down from where they put them out at was one of those big sewer pipes and they would go down there, walk right on down there, about a half mile from where they got thrown out the gate. Crawl through that, got in that big sewer pipe and crawled under the fence and come out on that side. That happened for a long time. The guard couldn’t figure out because they see the same person they put out and they’d be right back. And that’s where they were coming in at. Finally, they got wind of where that was, and they went down when they put them out, they went down to that pipe, sewer line. That thing was long you know, over there off the Turnpike, one of them big ole pipe you know and it went under the fence and the guards found out about it and so when they crawled up there, they were sitting up there waiting on them. So that broke up that, that play off.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s an amazing story considering how much security there was, that you could just crawl up through a pipe.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah. And they couldn’t figure that out. Them women did that for a year or two. They put them out the gate and they go around and go up the thing there, nowhere on back up there, in one of them big water pipes and they crawl through that and get on back inside the plant.
MR. ALBRECHT: What about other illegal things, like liquor, I know liquor had to come in.
MR. WILLIAMS: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That was awful. They probably go to Chattanooga on the bus. I rode it a time or two, and seen it happen. And I had bought some to come in. But what I was buying, I wasn’t buying it to sell it. When I went to Chattanooga, I’d bring me a fifth of something back, they wouldn’t bother you. They look at and see that’s all you had. But what happen, those fellows go and bootleg, he go down there to Chattanooga. He go in there and buy all that whiskey. That man knowing he was from Oak Ridge, he had that figured out. When they got on the bus to come back here, that there, that driver who was driving the bus, he know it. He already know who got the whiskey, because he been sitting up there all the way from Chattanooga looking in that mirror. The guy got a coat full sitting back there. When they get down to that gate, that guard would get on and he would give that guard a sign who got whiskey in his coat. That guard would go right up there and get him. He be the bottle man, just lining them up. (Laughter) They didn’t arrest him or nothing, what they did most the time, they just took it. See, they took it. They took it and put him off then he had somebody to come out there and get him, but he didn’t bring the whiskey in because the guards were going to take it. So they took it, and I reckon they going to go sell it. (Laughter) But that’s the way it was.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s amazing. Let’s talk a little bit about what life was like at work. Now your job, you said you were a concrete finisher.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, yeah. I was a concrete finisher
MR. ALBRECHT: But you mentioned working on bath houses and some things like that.
MR. WILLIAMS: Had I thought about it, I would have brought a picture. I don’t know if you are meeting with K-25. But the first yard of concrete was poured on that 25 steel building. I don’t know if you ever seen it. It was the 18th day of November, 1943. I’m one of the fellows that poured the first thing on it. I got the picture at the house. And we posed. At that time, you had to be in the union. That was in Knoxville, it was the local 55, was the number. There were no whites in that union; it was all black, concrete finishers. And it stayed that way for years and years. It was all black and finally later and later up in years, the whites were wanting to get in the local. They got in there and they started finishing concrete. I learned the minute when they come in. On that union sheet, it was all black for years. Some 200 and some black concrete finishers; 30 were down at K-25, just at that place alone, plus all those at Y-12 and X-10. All those going down to the same local, down in Knoxville.
MR. ALBRECHT: Tell me about, as a concrete finisher that is a specialized trade. Tell us a little bit about how much you got paid.
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, at that time when they started this thing, there wasn’t a whole lot of money. Nobody made when they started. At that time, 1943, a cement finisher got a $1.37 and half cents an hour. Carpenter got $1.30 an hour. The highest paid craftsman that was out there was the iron worker. You know sitting up high on the steel up there. They got a $1.60. And it was all between that and that until we on up after the war was over with, then they finally negotiated for a raise in the union, carpenters and all. And they got a raise. Then the carpenter went to $1.60, cement finisher went to $1.65 or 70. The iron worker got about $2.10 or something like that, that fellow sitting up on that steel. But they had to wait until they were all done with the war, them two or three years. But that’s the rate and that’s what you got.
MR. ALBRECHT: You mentioned that the union, the concrete finisher union, it was all black.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you work with any white men at all? Or were all the concrete finishers black? What about the other trades, like carpentry?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, they finally, well what had happened, the whites finally learned how to finish concrete, but at that time, when they started the thing, you couldn’t get a white person in there because they thought it too hard to work. So they ain’t got them. Later on in years they broke it down. I learned many white fellows who wanted to try it and they got in the local. The same way with the carpenters. See all the carpenters at one time were all white, but they finally let the blacks get in. They had a separate local. They had a local for black and a local for the white carpenters, before they finally merged. So that’s the way it was. I remember they were down at K-25; the carpenters would go in there and work in them buildings. Those carpenters would put down the floor, the white carpenters; they were doing all the carpenter work there. The black carpenters would be out there digging a ditch or putting in a pipe. They wouldn’t even work with them. They wouldn’t even work with them. Until finally they had the law down from Washington DC, and the last of that thing because everybody come down from Washington and nobody wanted to work for the man that terminated them. So that is when they started letting black and white carpenters work together.
MR. ALBRECHT: Now, you had black carpenters, you had white carpenters, you had black concrete finishers, you had white concrete finishers.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, well you see at one time, there wasn’t any white concrete finishers and in the later years the whites got in there and wanted to make some of that money too. I remember the first man I took him out and learned him. Of course there weren’t any white concrete finishers that belonged to the local. They didn’t even think about trying to get in there because they were an all black local.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did the black workers and white workers get the same pay?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, oh yeah, they got the same pay. That’s what it was, the union paid everybody the same, what they traveled was paid, they paid. Then they went to segregate and they handed down from Washington them black carpenters. The whites had to let them work with them now. They wouldn’t let no black carpenters work there. And they, in Knoxville it was two different locals, a white local for carpenters, and a black local for carpenters. Cement finisher didn’t have but the one local, and it was all black and then the whites wanted to get in. You put them in and they started working right alongside us. That was different it was.
[off camera talk]
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you know, or at what point did you know what this Manhattan Project was all about? When did you learn that they were making an atomic bomb?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, honestly, I didn’t know it until the day they dropped the bomb in 1945. That’s when they let us know what they were doing. You went to work every day, I’d been here two long years before that. The only thing you know, the sign says, “See nothing, know nothing, and ask nothing.” That is what you looked at day-in and day-out. You didn’t ask nobody nothing, you didn’t see anything, and you didn’t know nothing. That was the way it was. The day they dropped that atomic bomb on the Japanese there, I think it was July, wasn’t it? I believe it was July, yeah, I think it was July when they dropped that, the United States dropped that bomb. I think it was July or August, one, I use to remember. And this was when we were all out there working. And that is when they said that the United States had dropped the bomb on them folks and it was made in Oak Ridge. That’s when I knowed about it.
MR. ALBRECHT: What did you think when you learned that that bomb was made right here?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, it’s just astonishing! I didn’t know what to believe. I had been here two long years and didn’t know what they were doing working. Everybody leave and I hadn’t been home in over two years or three, after they dropped that thing. I took off. I caught the bus and it went all through. St. Louis, I had a brother and sister there. It took me all the way through and on back into Memphis. I had a big foot locker with clothes and things and I know I wasn’t going to need that thing because I wasn’t going to be on the road or somewhere. I didn’t figure I would be here. So when I got back, I started back to work on that job and they called us in. J.A. Jones had a job in Lima, Georgia. I don’t know if you been out there called Buckhead. They build some great, big mansion houses for them big, rich folks and things. I had to leave this here and join and go down there. Worked on that, finished concrete down there. What made me leave from down there and I came back here and I’ve been here ever since. I got on the bus one evening coming in. It happened to me. I reckon you heard about the lady, what they did, about Rosa Parks and sitting in a bus in Alabama. Well, I was on a bus sitting in the back seat. It’s always been colored. I rode back and forth to work every day, going and sitting on that back seat. On that day, there were some white people standing that were on that bus. The guy, I don’t know what he was, he said, “There no place to sit down.” A lot of white people standing up, but I never seen a white person sitting on that back seat. But that’s what the guy said. I worked on. I had two days left in that week. I worked, got my pay, and got on the bus, and come on back here. I’ve been here ever since. I had two days of work. I came back here to Oak Ridge and went back to work at K-25, at the same job. I worked for the same company; Jones wondered what I was doing back here. I told them that I wouldn’t work there if I had to stand up riding back and forth to work and that back seat was empty. There was nobody that sat in it, but the man told me I couldn’t sit down.
MR. ALBRECHT: That is amazing.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: Doesn’t make any sense at all.
MR. WILLIAMS: Didn’t make any sense at all. But you see that was their policy, I reckon. And I knowed I was used to sitting on that back seat and when I couldn’t sit on that what was I to do. Nothing but leave. So I came on back here and I’ve been here ever since.
MR. ALBRECHT: So this was a better place to live.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, a lot better. I had never seen that happen. Every time I got on a bus, just going to Knoxville you rode those buses 30 minutes going to Knoxville, but nobody ever told you to get up off that back seat back there.
MR. ALBRECHT: Back to the atomic bomb, you were surprised when you learned about that.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: How did that make you feel?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, all I could say, it made me feel bad one way, scared, and then it made me feel good the other. I had been working here two long years and didn’t know what they were doing. And that’s when we come to the light and we know what they were doing, building that bomb. I had been here two long years and on this thing you went up and down the road went to work every day, go back to your houses. I get on the bus and go to Knoxville and stay all day and come back. Because the bus ran every hour from here to Knoxville. You can catch a bus every hour going to Knoxville and you could catch one every hour coming back to the hut. And when they said that that was what they were building here, I felt good in one way. They had made something or other and dropped on other people instead of here. They could have had that thing dropped here. And so that’s what made me…
MR. ALBRECHT: When you were working here those two years, and you didn’t know that it was an atomic bomb that they were going to create. Were there rumors, was there talk about what all this building and what all these people were doing?
MR. WILLIAMS: No, see the only thing, these plants, everyone seen everywhere you went, you seen a sign. It said, “You know nothing, you ask nothing.”
MR. ALBRECHT: Do you think they could do that today? Do you think that big a secret could be kept today?
MR. WILLIAMS: No, no. because folks got two eyes. No, they couldn’t do it. There is somebody, somebody close.
[off camera talk]
MR. ALBRECHT: Mr. Williams, looking back, looking back on the whole thing, how do you feel about the work you did? Do you think that the work that you did made a difference in the war effort?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, I do. Because that, we had to work 16 hours a day trying to get the thing done. But like I told you, when I did all that work, I didn’t know what the work done was for. But it was getting done with working 12-14 hours a day. That’s why I was here, for the money. So, I didn’t know what it was doing.
MR. ALBRECHT: That was a lot of money you were making at the time.
MR. WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: What did you do with the money?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, I don’t know. I reckon I threw it away, spent it or did something. Working day and night, I was making over $300, $400 a week, at that time.
MR. ALBRECHT: What else comes to mind when you think about the war years here in Oak Ridge? Any other stories come to mind?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, no. I mean to say, I guess it was made; I was part of the thing and didn’t know what I was doing. That was a part about it. When I got out and come to be paid that I had worked there that long. And the first black to cross the river down there coming into this place.
MR. ALBRECHT: Do you have any pictures or work papers or anything that was connected with the time that you still have?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: Do you?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, I got some pictures over there right now. I lent them to my girlfriend and never got them back. I got a picture of the first yard of concrete that was poured at K-25.
MR. ALBRECHT: When we get further along on this project, if it’s alright with you, I’d like to talk to you again to borrow those pictures and make copies of them for us to use.
MR. WILLIAMS: I ain’t got them now. This girl came by here about two weeks ago and got those pictures. I got two or three. She told me last night, she had them, and I don’t know what she said they were at, the museum or somewhere.
MR. ALBRECHT: Oh, okay.
MR. WILLIAMS: But you would see the work I’d been telling you about. Finishing concrete.
MR. ALBRECHT: I’d love to see those pictures.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, I have them.
MR. ALBRECHT: Are there other people that you know, here in town that worked on the project during the war? Obviously, Ms. Strickland, we’ve talked to.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, I knowed her worked on it. What it is, I guess I’m the only one left for the work at that time that they did, there were a bunch of them, but they’re gone now. They’re dead.
MR. ALBRECHT: Any other questions Rick that come to your mind?
RICK: Seems like there ought to be. We would like to give you a chance to, if there is anything else you’d like to say about any thoughts you had about either when you were in the situation many years ago, or looking back on it. It was an amazing thing that was done and I would think that being a part of it would have you have certain feelings about it.
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, I mean this was, I didn’t have, I was just told my job and I did what I was told to do. And up and down the road and everywhere you looked, the signs said, “You know nothing, you ask nothing.” And that is the way it was all the time.
MR. ALBRECHT: I have another question for you. I was set up to ask you this question and see what your response was. I was told to ask you about the jail house.
MR. WILLIAMS: The jail house?
MR. ALBRECHT: The jail house.
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, I don’t know about no jail. I have never been in there.
MR. ALBRECHT: This was something a story Will Minter was sharing with me. It was something about a school and a jail house.
MR. WILLIAMS: Oh yeah. I know what you talking about. Yeah, they had to use it. Over here the Scarboro School, over here going toward X-10, that’s what they used at the time, but I never was in it. That’s where they locked them up in. Yeah, I remember that. But I never was in the jail house. Never been in a jail house in my life.
MR. ALBRECHT: Good for you. Me neither. (Laughter)
MR. WILLIAMS: So I couldn’t.
MR. ALBRECHT: I guess he thought there was a story there.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, I know what he’s talking about. I know they locked them up and kept them up in it. I know what that was. But I was never in it.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay. Mr. Williams, I want to thank you so much for your time today, unless you got anything else, I think we have asked all the questions we wanted to ask here. You really filled in a lot of blanks and really told some good stories.
MR. WILLIAMS: I guess I been through this chain here at least a dozen times. I’ve talked with so many different groups of people. Just like I told you last month, was it back last month? No, it was in May. No it was in June when I had to go met them. Had to go meet them, 12 people from Arizona and talk with them. When they called me, I just thought it was one person, I didn’t know it was a whole group of them. But I had to go meet with them. That was back in June.
MR. ALBRECHT: So, it’s a good thing the history is being told and saved. That’s important.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah. I’ve met a many, many. I was sitting at the house one day and the phone rang. The lady told me she was in the Pentagon in Washington DC. She said she would be in Oak Ridge the next few days. I didn’t think no more about it. I gave her my telephone number and name. And about three or four days she was here. She gave me a call and she came to my house.
MR. ALBRECHT: Interesting. Anything else?
RICK: We talked about where he lived. I think that’s pretty much it.
MR. ALBRECHT: We covered it all. I’ll get the microphone off of you. Thanks so much for coming down today.
RICK: Do we want to get the rhymetone again?
MR. ALBRECHT: Yeah let’s just sit quietly for a moment, so we can get the sounds of the room.
[pause]
RICK: Okay.
MR. ALBRECHT: Alright let me get you unstrapped.
[End of Interview]

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ORAL HISTORY OF HAL WILLIAMS
Interviewed by Chris Albrecht
Filmed by Significant Productions
November 3, 2005
Transcribed by Jordan Reed
MR. WILLIAMS: I moved in that house there, the 19th day of February, 1949. I have been there ever since. I rented a house for years from the government and then I bought it. I own it. Been the owner there since ’73.
MR. ALBRECHT: So, you bought the house in ’73?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: What year did you come to Oak Ridge?
MR. WILLIAMS: I started working here the 8th day of July, 1943.
MR. ALBRECHT: How did you hear about, how did you learn about coming to Oak… I think I heard something about you already worked for J.A. Jones. Tell us about that.
MR. WILLIAMS: See, I already worked for J.A. Jones two years before I came here. We wind up, I don’t know where you ever been to, Mississippi. Well, working here two jobs, one at Flora, Mississippi, and one at Grenada, Mississippi. He built the Army camp there. He built the Army camp. They still use that for [inaudible] I think. I worked there two years with him. Then last day of June in 1943, they told us that we, they didn’t need us no more, the jobs. They said we got two places for you to go. You go to Knoxville, Tennessee, or Tacoma, Washington. My home, I was born and raised 15 miles out of Memphis. I said I’m not going to Tacoma, Washington. I’ll go to Knoxville, Tennessee.
[break in audio]
MR. ALBRECHT: Where were we?
MR. WILLIAMS: Believe you was asking me…
MR. ALBRECHT: You had a choice of Knoxville or Tacoma. And you decided to come here. Let’s pick up there.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah. I decided I would come here, where I’d be closer to home. I told them I didn’t know nothing about no Tacoma, Washington. And what happened there was nine of us working on this job. We got, they laid us off the last day of June and we were suppose to come the next day. We had two days or three. One of the fellows, there was some kind of factory there in Memphis, his brother worked there and he worked on this thing. He decided he wanted to go by and see his brother. And some kind of machine that had a saw and you pulled it. He worked there for a long time, before he started working with us. So he went there before he come up here. He was going to go by and see his brother. He asked the brother if he could use that thing. He’d been working there for years, and so, I don’t know, he just reached and got that thing. It’s got a saw blade on it and he stumbled, or something, and that thing cut him right in two. So, after that we was suppose to come here that next day, but after that happened to that guy, we decided we’d stay on until they had the funeral. The other nine, there were ten of us was coming, and so after they had the funeral, we still messed around. The police knew all us was coming down home. And so the company get the police the names and told them to when we were going to come be down there that Monday to Knoxville, Tennessee. We came down and got down there at 9 o’clock that Monday morning. We went into the post office to get us a ticket. We got on the office about 10 o’clock that day and rolled into Jackson, Tennessee, and then we had to change. We was on a Trailway bus, had to change to Greyhound in Jackson, Tennessee. We went down and stayed down in Jackson, Tennessee, until about 12, 1 o’clock that night. We had a, they had a chartered bus for us. I thought all the time I was going, I was going all I know was Knoxville. Well, when we got into over here in Kingston. You know where Kingston is? The driver said, “This is where y’all get off at.” I said, “No, this ain’t where we get off. We get in Knoxville.” He said, “No, you don’t go no further, you get off here.” So, we got off and walked under the streetlight and seen something colored, looked up there in that high mountain setting up there. “What in the world they mean to put us in this place?” to the bus driver. Well, there was this lady and she was use to folks coming there and she had some kind of little hotel and restaurant or something. She come out there, said, “How y’all doing?” We told here. She said, “Well, I fixed y’all some breakfast.” She said, “They aren’t going to open over there where y’all going until about 9 or 10 o’clock.” And so we sat down and eat there on the walk and I reckon about an hour or two after that we were still sitting there. I didn’t know at that time. Had no, had never been down there in that part of town. We left at four, they come and got us. I reckon a hundred people lined up on the other side of the street looking at us wondering what we were doing there. They just walked up and down the street. That group would leave off and then another group come up. But we were on one side of the street and they were on the other side. I heard after then, after working here long that they never seen no color people down there where we were at. So, that’s why they were congregating. They didn’t bother, didn’t say nothing, but they just amazed to see us down there. We were on our way out here to this place coming in here, K-25. But after living round here and coming here and going back and forth, they were looking was because there were never no colored people down in Kingston where we were at. So, we came on in. We had to go, they didn’t have nothing for you to live in. Not here. They didn’t put nothing. I don’t know if you from around here or you not heard of Norris? You know where Norris is at? Well, there was a CCC camp and they had that closed. We stayed there until they built a hut thing. We live there at work down there, K-25 and Jones.
MR. ALBRECHT: How long did you live there in Norris and have to come back and forth?
MR. WILLIAMS: I stayed there about two weeks. I stayed there about two. The boys would come. A fellow came a week and stayed and that’s where they were at. Finally, they had the, what they call huts. They was on tractor trailers sitting down there, but there wasn’t anybody to unload them or do the work. There wasn’t anybody to do them. They started, come in. I was a concrete finisher, poured the bathhouse and things. The first four huts we build and got them up, we moved in them. Then they kept adding them, building them bathhouses, finally built a cafeteria. But we stayed in the first four huts.
MR. ALBRECHT: Tell me about the huts, I know, how were they to live in? Like in the winter, were they cold, in the summer, were they hot? How much room did you have? Tell me about that.
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, there were four beds in these round type huts. Four men or whatever it was. You didn’t have but four. You had a cot right over in that corner and another in that corner. Two on that side and two on that side. A great big ole coal heater sat right up the center, that’s what you warmed by. That big ole coal heater. They had some coal; you go out there and bang it down. It would burn you up though when it was hot in there. When the fire went down you put some coal or wood in that little box. [Inaudible] That’s what it was. I stayed in that hut I reckon about, bet about three years in that thing. Finally, they moved us out of there. Well we moved into some dormitory things. Men and women. When we came and living in the huts, the whites were living there. But when they got laid off, then they put us in them. Then we got put there. The next thing, we moved over here, to the same type of thing like the huts, over here. Right in there through, I don’t know if you know where that place at, at that time, it was called the hut area. Where the Red Cross, is a cemetery right in there now they got houses in there. That’s where we moved from down there to there. Red Cross in front of the Holiday Inn all the way up to where you see them houses. That was the hut area for black and had a pen there for woman. I stayed there until they built them houses. I worked on them. Finished the walks and things. The house I’m in right now. The government built them with two parts. I moved in one end and they rented the other end out. That’s the way you finally got a house and out of them huts. Couldn’t nobody...
We were, at first, was going to build an all stone house. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Woodland neighborhood over there, but just block houses over there. It was 500 of them block houses they were going to put in down there. After they find out that it was too expensive for the blacks to live in. They couldn’t, with the jobs they had, couldn’t pay the rent. We went back. Right up yonder there at Jackson Square, the Town Hall right up there, what they use to called Town Hall was up there at Jackson Square, use to be a fire hall in part now. Went up there and met with the governor, DOE and asked them could they build us something cheaper. They said yeah. We just take those 400 and some block houses and put them in Woodland area and we built a house down there with two units and that would be cheaper. That’s what they did. I worked with the contractor, finished the concrete sidewalks and things. The government, you went down and picked out your house where you want to live when they got it down, while they were working on it. They called me the 19th day of February, 1949; I come in from working at K-25 and I come in, me and my wife, and they had a moat (?) and my house was ready. I lived straight over there from that museum over there. That was called flattop. That’s where I was living at that time.
RICK: Hey Chris, I need to close that door and [inaudible].
[Break in tape]
MR. ALBRECHT: They told us there would be two people here all day.
RICK: And we’re back on.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay.
RICK: Sorry for that.
MR. ALBRECHT: I wanted to ask you when you first came here and you were living up in Norris and then in a hut, were you married at that time?
MR. WILLIAMS: No, no.
MR. ALBRECHT: You weren’t married at that time.
MR. WILLIAMS: No, I didn’t marry until 1946. I met my wife. We had to get on a bus and ride to Chattanooga, Roth [Rome], Georgia. Most everybody that got married, that’s where they went. To Roth, you heard of Roth, Georgia? I mean you might have been there. It’s right out of Chattanooga. And you could go down there and marry. You walk in there and they take your blood pressure and marry you then. Down here you had to go through a lot of stuff and that’s where I got married.
MR. ALBRECHT: You mentioned women living in the pen and the men out in the huts. How did they keep the men and women apart back then?
MR. WILLIAMS: They tried but they didn’t keep them apart. What it was was the men slip in with the bow drawn to the thing. And so the women would ease out and they take the bow down and come out them holes, than the gate because the guard was at the gate. They slip out the other way. Sometimes the guards would come around at a certain time of night there, come around checking the woman huts, you know. They go in there and they walk in there sometime and there wouldn’t be but one woman. Or sometime there wouldn’t be none. They had a mean lieutenant. He was rough at that time. He told the ladies said, you have a penny to come tell me why. He go up and down there. The women was off at the men’s hut. When he got done going up and through there, they was back in there. He was so rough and he got where he was so rough on the people that, and the [inaudible] come a leaving in the woman thing and men too because that guy was rough. They had to get rid of him because they weren’t going to work. And the government needed him. One morning, he come out, when the women went to work on Saturday. Women and men. There were about 60 something, and they had a headquarters up there, about 60 women over there and about 65, 70 men. And the superintendent came out there, won’t nobody come to work that morning. He found out they had them all up at the headquarters. Had them up there at the court. All were fastened up. Ain’t nobody on the job the superintendent called up there, wanting to know where the people was, and he found out them guards, the lieutenant had them all fastened up, up there. And that wasn’t going to work. They needed them people on the job because they needed to get that thing ready, get that bomb ready. And they run that guy, they ran him away from there. Then they had no trouble. Women went on to work and went to the huts. He was just that tough. But they got rid of him because they weren’t getting any work done. Everybody up there in the pen, locked up. That’s what happened to him. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: What, there were a lot of women working here. Were there women from outside? Were there prostitutes that would come in here?
MR. WILLIAMS: No, I mean, yes, some would come in. See that was the problem. You had to have a badge. And you had to have that badge on everywhere you went. They would have a shake down every once and a while. See women would get in here and hire in, go to work and they would get into the men’s huts. And the man be out there looking for them. They don’t stop work; see some of them didn’t come to work anymore. All they wanted was to get in the gate and get a pass to get in here. And then they do that hut thing. Then the guards come in catching them. They would camp out yonder by Elza Gate. You know where that is, going out the [Oak Ridge] Turnpike? They camp out there and put them out the gate. And then some of them get back in there. Tons of women came back. They didn’t know how they were getting back in. Right down from where they put them out at was one of those big sewer pipes and they would go down there, walk right on down there, about a half mile from where they got thrown out the gate. Crawl through that, got in that big sewer pipe and crawled under the fence and come out on that side. That happened for a long time. The guard couldn’t figure out because they see the same person they put out and they’d be right back. And that’s where they were coming in at. Finally, they got wind of where that was, and they went down when they put them out, they went down to that pipe, sewer line. That thing was long you know, over there off the Turnpike, one of them big ole pipe you know and it went under the fence and the guards found out about it and so when they crawled up there, they were sitting up there waiting on them. So that broke up that, that play off.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s an amazing story considering how much security there was, that you could just crawl up through a pipe.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah. And they couldn’t figure that out. Them women did that for a year or two. They put them out the gate and they go around and go up the thing there, nowhere on back up there, in one of them big water pipes and they crawl through that and get on back inside the plant.
MR. ALBRECHT: What about other illegal things, like liquor, I know liquor had to come in.
MR. WILLIAMS: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That was awful. They probably go to Chattanooga on the bus. I rode it a time or two, and seen it happen. And I had bought some to come in. But what I was buying, I wasn’t buying it to sell it. When I went to Chattanooga, I’d bring me a fifth of something back, they wouldn’t bother you. They look at and see that’s all you had. But what happen, those fellows go and bootleg, he go down there to Chattanooga. He go in there and buy all that whiskey. That man knowing he was from Oak Ridge, he had that figured out. When they got on the bus to come back here, that there, that driver who was driving the bus, he know it. He already know who got the whiskey, because he been sitting up there all the way from Chattanooga looking in that mirror. The guy got a coat full sitting back there. When they get down to that gate, that guard would get on and he would give that guard a sign who got whiskey in his coat. That guard would go right up there and get him. He be the bottle man, just lining them up. (Laughter) They didn’t arrest him or nothing, what they did most the time, they just took it. See, they took it. They took it and put him off then he had somebody to come out there and get him, but he didn’t bring the whiskey in because the guards were going to take it. So they took it, and I reckon they going to go sell it. (Laughter) But that’s the way it was.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s amazing. Let’s talk a little bit about what life was like at work. Now your job, you said you were a concrete finisher.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, yeah. I was a concrete finisher
MR. ALBRECHT: But you mentioned working on bath houses and some things like that.
MR. WILLIAMS: Had I thought about it, I would have brought a picture. I don’t know if you are meeting with K-25. But the first yard of concrete was poured on that 25 steel building. I don’t know if you ever seen it. It was the 18th day of November, 1943. I’m one of the fellows that poured the first thing on it. I got the picture at the house. And we posed. At that time, you had to be in the union. That was in Knoxville, it was the local 55, was the number. There were no whites in that union; it was all black, concrete finishers. And it stayed that way for years and years. It was all black and finally later and later up in years, the whites were wanting to get in the local. They got in there and they started finishing concrete. I learned the minute when they come in. On that union sheet, it was all black for years. Some 200 and some black concrete finishers; 30 were down at K-25, just at that place alone, plus all those at Y-12 and X-10. All those going down to the same local, down in Knoxville.
MR. ALBRECHT: Tell me about, as a concrete finisher that is a specialized trade. Tell us a little bit about how much you got paid.
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, at that time when they started this thing, there wasn’t a whole lot of money. Nobody made when they started. At that time, 1943, a cement finisher got a $1.37 and half cents an hour. Carpenter got $1.30 an hour. The highest paid craftsman that was out there was the iron worker. You know sitting up high on the steel up there. They got a $1.60. And it was all between that and that until we on up after the war was over with, then they finally negotiated for a raise in the union, carpenters and all. And they got a raise. Then the carpenter went to $1.60, cement finisher went to $1.65 or 70. The iron worker got about $2.10 or something like that, that fellow sitting up on that steel. But they had to wait until they were all done with the war, them two or three years. But that’s the rate and that’s what you got.
MR. ALBRECHT: You mentioned that the union, the concrete finisher union, it was all black.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you work with any white men at all? Or were all the concrete finishers black? What about the other trades, like carpentry?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, they finally, well what had happened, the whites finally learned how to finish concrete, but at that time, when they started the thing, you couldn’t get a white person in there because they thought it too hard to work. So they ain’t got them. Later on in years they broke it down. I learned many white fellows who wanted to try it and they got in the local. The same way with the carpenters. See all the carpenters at one time were all white, but they finally let the blacks get in. They had a separate local. They had a local for black and a local for the white carpenters, before they finally merged. So that’s the way it was. I remember they were down at K-25; the carpenters would go in there and work in them buildings. Those carpenters would put down the floor, the white carpenters; they were doing all the carpenter work there. The black carpenters would be out there digging a ditch or putting in a pipe. They wouldn’t even work with them. They wouldn’t even work with them. Until finally they had the law down from Washington DC, and the last of that thing because everybody come down from Washington and nobody wanted to work for the man that terminated them. So that is when they started letting black and white carpenters work together.
MR. ALBRECHT: Now, you had black carpenters, you had white carpenters, you had black concrete finishers, you had white concrete finishers.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, well you see at one time, there wasn’t any white concrete finishers and in the later years the whites got in there and wanted to make some of that money too. I remember the first man I took him out and learned him. Of course there weren’t any white concrete finishers that belonged to the local. They didn’t even think about trying to get in there because they were an all black local.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did the black workers and white workers get the same pay?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, oh yeah, they got the same pay. That’s what it was, the union paid everybody the same, what they traveled was paid, they paid. Then they went to segregate and they handed down from Washington them black carpenters. The whites had to let them work with them now. They wouldn’t let no black carpenters work there. And they, in Knoxville it was two different locals, a white local for carpenters, and a black local for carpenters. Cement finisher didn’t have but the one local, and it was all black and then the whites wanted to get in. You put them in and they started working right alongside us. That was different it was.
[off camera talk]
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you know, or at what point did you know what this Manhattan Project was all about? When did you learn that they were making an atomic bomb?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, honestly, I didn’t know it until the day they dropped the bomb in 1945. That’s when they let us know what they were doing. You went to work every day, I’d been here two long years before that. The only thing you know, the sign says, “See nothing, know nothing, and ask nothing.” That is what you looked at day-in and day-out. You didn’t ask nobody nothing, you didn’t see anything, and you didn’t know nothing. That was the way it was. The day they dropped that atomic bomb on the Japanese there, I think it was July, wasn’t it? I believe it was July, yeah, I think it was July when they dropped that, the United States dropped that bomb. I think it was July or August, one, I use to remember. And this was when we were all out there working. And that is when they said that the United States had dropped the bomb on them folks and it was made in Oak Ridge. That’s when I knowed about it.
MR. ALBRECHT: What did you think when you learned that that bomb was made right here?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, it’s just astonishing! I didn’t know what to believe. I had been here two long years and didn’t know what they were doing working. Everybody leave and I hadn’t been home in over two years or three, after they dropped that thing. I took off. I caught the bus and it went all through. St. Louis, I had a brother and sister there. It took me all the way through and on back into Memphis. I had a big foot locker with clothes and things and I know I wasn’t going to need that thing because I wasn’t going to be on the road or somewhere. I didn’t figure I would be here. So when I got back, I started back to work on that job and they called us in. J.A. Jones had a job in Lima, Georgia. I don’t know if you been out there called Buckhead. They build some great, big mansion houses for them big, rich folks and things. I had to leave this here and join and go down there. Worked on that, finished concrete down there. What made me leave from down there and I came back here and I’ve been here ever since. I got on the bus one evening coming in. It happened to me. I reckon you heard about the lady, what they did, about Rosa Parks and sitting in a bus in Alabama. Well, I was on a bus sitting in the back seat. It’s always been colored. I rode back and forth to work every day, going and sitting on that back seat. On that day, there were some white people standing that were on that bus. The guy, I don’t know what he was, he said, “There no place to sit down.” A lot of white people standing up, but I never seen a white person sitting on that back seat. But that’s what the guy said. I worked on. I had two days left in that week. I worked, got my pay, and got on the bus, and come on back here. I’ve been here ever since. I had two days of work. I came back here to Oak Ridge and went back to work at K-25, at the same job. I worked for the same company; Jones wondered what I was doing back here. I told them that I wouldn’t work there if I had to stand up riding back and forth to work and that back seat was empty. There was nobody that sat in it, but the man told me I couldn’t sit down.
MR. ALBRECHT: That is amazing.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: Doesn’t make any sense at all.
MR. WILLIAMS: Didn’t make any sense at all. But you see that was their policy, I reckon. And I knowed I was used to sitting on that back seat and when I couldn’t sit on that what was I to do. Nothing but leave. So I came on back here and I’ve been here ever since.
MR. ALBRECHT: So this was a better place to live.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, a lot better. I had never seen that happen. Every time I got on a bus, just going to Knoxville you rode those buses 30 minutes going to Knoxville, but nobody ever told you to get up off that back seat back there.
MR. ALBRECHT: Back to the atomic bomb, you were surprised when you learned about that.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: How did that make you feel?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, all I could say, it made me feel bad one way, scared, and then it made me feel good the other. I had been working here two long years and didn’t know what they were doing. And that’s when we come to the light and we know what they were doing, building that bomb. I had been here two long years and on this thing you went up and down the road went to work every day, go back to your houses. I get on the bus and go to Knoxville and stay all day and come back. Because the bus ran every hour from here to Knoxville. You can catch a bus every hour going to Knoxville and you could catch one every hour coming back to the hut. And when they said that that was what they were building here, I felt good in one way. They had made something or other and dropped on other people instead of here. They could have had that thing dropped here. And so that’s what made me…
MR. ALBRECHT: When you were working here those two years, and you didn’t know that it was an atomic bomb that they were going to create. Were there rumors, was there talk about what all this building and what all these people were doing?
MR. WILLIAMS: No, see the only thing, these plants, everyone seen everywhere you went, you seen a sign. It said, “You know nothing, you ask nothing.”
MR. ALBRECHT: Do you think they could do that today? Do you think that big a secret could be kept today?
MR. WILLIAMS: No, no. because folks got two eyes. No, they couldn’t do it. There is somebody, somebody close.
[off camera talk]
MR. ALBRECHT: Mr. Williams, looking back, looking back on the whole thing, how do you feel about the work you did? Do you think that the work that you did made a difference in the war effort?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, I do. Because that, we had to work 16 hours a day trying to get the thing done. But like I told you, when I did all that work, I didn’t know what the work done was for. But it was getting done with working 12-14 hours a day. That’s why I was here, for the money. So, I didn’t know what it was doing.
MR. ALBRECHT: That was a lot of money you were making at the time.
MR. WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: What did you do with the money?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, I don’t know. I reckon I threw it away, spent it or did something. Working day and night, I was making over $300, $400 a week, at that time.
MR. ALBRECHT: What else comes to mind when you think about the war years here in Oak Ridge? Any other stories come to mind?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, no. I mean to say, I guess it was made; I was part of the thing and didn’t know what I was doing. That was a part about it. When I got out and come to be paid that I had worked there that long. And the first black to cross the river down there coming into this place.
MR. ALBRECHT: Do you have any pictures or work papers or anything that was connected with the time that you still have?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: Do you?
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, I got some pictures over there right now. I lent them to my girlfriend and never got them back. I got a picture of the first yard of concrete that was poured at K-25.
MR. ALBRECHT: When we get further along on this project, if it’s alright with you, I’d like to talk to you again to borrow those pictures and make copies of them for us to use.
MR. WILLIAMS: I ain’t got them now. This girl came by here about two weeks ago and got those pictures. I got two or three. She told me last night, she had them, and I don’t know what she said they were at, the museum or somewhere.
MR. ALBRECHT: Oh, okay.
MR. WILLIAMS: But you would see the work I’d been telling you about. Finishing concrete.
MR. ALBRECHT: I’d love to see those pictures.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, I have them.
MR. ALBRECHT: Are there other people that you know, here in town that worked on the project during the war? Obviously, Ms. Strickland, we’ve talked to.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, I knowed her worked on it. What it is, I guess I’m the only one left for the work at that time that they did, there were a bunch of them, but they’re gone now. They’re dead.
MR. ALBRECHT: Any other questions Rick that come to your mind?
RICK: Seems like there ought to be. We would like to give you a chance to, if there is anything else you’d like to say about any thoughts you had about either when you were in the situation many years ago, or looking back on it. It was an amazing thing that was done and I would think that being a part of it would have you have certain feelings about it.
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, I mean this was, I didn’t have, I was just told my job and I did what I was told to do. And up and down the road and everywhere you looked, the signs said, “You know nothing, you ask nothing.” And that is the way it was all the time.
MR. ALBRECHT: I have another question for you. I was set up to ask you this question and see what your response was. I was told to ask you about the jail house.
MR. WILLIAMS: The jail house?
MR. ALBRECHT: The jail house.
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, I don’t know about no jail. I have never been in there.
MR. ALBRECHT: This was something a story Will Minter was sharing with me. It was something about a school and a jail house.
MR. WILLIAMS: Oh yeah. I know what you talking about. Yeah, they had to use it. Over here the Scarboro School, over here going toward X-10, that’s what they used at the time, but I never was in it. That’s where they locked them up in. Yeah, I remember that. But I never was in the jail house. Never been in a jail house in my life.
MR. ALBRECHT: Good for you. Me neither. (Laughter)
MR. WILLIAMS: So I couldn’t.
MR. ALBRECHT: I guess he thought there was a story there.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah, I know what he’s talking about. I know they locked them up and kept them up in it. I know what that was. But I was never in it.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay. Mr. Williams, I want to thank you so much for your time today, unless you got anything else, I think we have asked all the questions we wanted to ask here. You really filled in a lot of blanks and really told some good stories.
MR. WILLIAMS: I guess I been through this chain here at least a dozen times. I’ve talked with so many different groups of people. Just like I told you last month, was it back last month? No, it was in May. No it was in June when I had to go met them. Had to go meet them, 12 people from Arizona and talk with them. When they called me, I just thought it was one person, I didn’t know it was a whole group of them. But I had to go meet with them. That was back in June.
MR. ALBRECHT: So, it’s a good thing the history is being told and saved. That’s important.
MR. WILLIAMS: Yeah. I’ve met a many, many. I was sitting at the house one day and the phone rang. The lady told me she was in the Pentagon in Washington DC. She said she would be in Oak Ridge the next few days. I didn’t think no more about it. I gave her my telephone number and name. And about three or four days she was here. She gave me a call and she came to my house.
MR. ALBRECHT: Interesting. Anything else?
RICK: We talked about where he lived. I think that’s pretty much it.
MR. ALBRECHT: We covered it all. I’ll get the microphone off of you. Thanks so much for coming down today.
RICK: Do we want to get the rhymetone again?
MR. ALBRECHT: Yeah let’s just sit quietly for a moment, so we can get the sounds of the room.
[pause]
RICK: Okay.
MR. ALBRECHT: Alright let me get you unstrapped.
[End of Interview]